Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Interior plans new rules on ‘blowout preventers’

Interior Department officials are planning new regulations to bolster subsea blowout preventers at offshore oil-and-gas rigs. The blowout preventer — a supposedly fail-safe device to contain runaway wells — did not deploy correctly when BP’s Macondo well ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico last April. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters on a conference call Tuesday that regulators are examining issues including instrumentation and the need for a more robust system of so-called blind shear rams. A federally commissioned forensic report on the blowout preventer used at BP’s well found that its shear rams — powerful metal arms intended to close off wells — were unable to close around a piece of pipe that became trapped during the accident...more

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